If you happened to watch television in the evenings during December, in order to relax after a long work day, you may have noticed more than one “Year in Review” program. Well, we’re also taking the time to recap everything that happened in the turbulent year of 2009. As Joana Breidenbach already reviewed the social sector in her four part blog posts, I will dedicate this year in review more toward what has happened specifically at betterplace.org (and sorry, some links are in German!).
1st Quarter
The year began just the same as it ended in 2008: eventfully. Many exciting projects found support on betterplace.org. One such project, that we found particularly interesting, was Cinema Jenin. The goal of the project was to build a cinema in the Palestinian town of Jenin to revive the film culture within the city and refugee camp. The construction of the cinema building is now nearly finished.
Two other cool projects that we’ve promoted since the first quarter of the year, are Skateistan and Boxgirls International. Skateistan is an educational project founded as a skate school in Afghanistan. This approach had us thoroughly fascinated. The same goes for Boxgirls International, which provides women and girls the opportunity to develop abilities in the ring and further apply those strengths to their own personal and professional lives. This project is just bursting with energy.
But everyone also sometimes needs a time-out. And that applies to servers as well. It was this fact that spurred our campaign „Server down – Engagement hoch“ which we brought to life on the International Day of System Administrators. Instead of a boring “The server is temporarily unavailable” message, our banner allows webpage operators to now offer their visitors the opportunity to shorten their waiting time while simultaneously making the world a little bit better.
2nd Quarter
We received a lot of visits in April. During our Open House day, Prof. Dr. Peter Eigen, the founder of Transparency International, gave us the honour of holding an impressive speech. He elaborated on the idea of an Open House and awarded betterplace.org as a “Chosen Place in the Land of Ideas”, an initiative under the patronage of Germany’s Federal President, Horst Köhler.
That the activation of one’s own community can work like a charm if the context is right was shown this year by Pennergame. Throughout 2009, the animators for online games encouraged their members to support homeless people over betterplace.org. Even now, they are the largest Team on our platform. Keep it up!
Around the same time, we were able to announce an important next step for ourselves: the betterplace.org nonprofit will become a nonprofit corporation in the near future. This step should help us to be stronger without inflating our organisational structure.
3rd Quarter
We were of course also very happy about the engagement of actress Anna Maria Mühe with betterplace.org. In July, Ms. Mühe visited the Children’s Hospital Bärenherz in Leipzig and has been supporting it ever since. You can read about her visit on the Bärenherz project site on betterplace.org. In addition, she agreed to grace our homepage with her photo during the second half of 2009.
In the fall, the Mozilla Contribute Week took place. All those Internet-savvy people out there were challenged to make accessible their knowledge of the Internet and its possible adaptation for social projects. betterplace.org supported the Mozilla Contribute Week in Germany as the mediator between volunteers and suitable projects.
During the fashionable autumn season, we decided to try out our trend-setting capabilities. Together with the creative portal 12designer, we launched a t-shirt contest. The resulting contributions were all of very high quality. You can view the winning shirt design at Speradshirt. That’s how sexy changing the world can be.
betterplace.org is there for everyone. That’s why even large organisations use betterplace.org to collect donations. A good example of this is action medeor, Germany’s largest medical aid organisation. In just one year, they managed to collect 12,250 Euros for their work. The organisation was especially convinced to use betterplace.org because of the ability to stay very current as well as the inexpensive cost of new donor acquisition.
In the 3rd quarter of 2009, we were also able to prove that television viewing doesn’t inevitably make one overweight, ignorant and depressed. The agency “Heck-Antrieb” (“Rear-Wheel-Drive”), together with “Kropp & Ritzert Create GmbH” produced a pro-bono spot that was broadcasted nationwide. You can see the program online here, on our Facebook page, or on our profile on meinVZ.
4th Quarter
Another wonderful campaign took place in the 4th quarter of 2009. Together with eBay and the sale service providers LIMAL and DHL, we were able to setup an infrastructure allowing brand manufacturers to donate goods auctioned at retail price on eBay to projects on betterplace.org. And the nice thing is: the manufacturers and other parties agreed to forego service costs and donate 100% to designated projects over betterplace.org.
That’s how far we’d come by October 2009. Just two years since the founding of betterplace.org, we’d almost broken the 1 Million Euro record of generated donations. We’re naturally very happy about this and thank you for your excellent involvement!
Jumping the hurdle of 1 Million Euros in donations was also a timely concept for us, since we arranged the annual “Global Online Giving Marketplaces Conference” in November. Attending this conference in Berlin were 13 international online giving platforms. Together, the organisations agreed to work deeply together, planning a global campaign to move more people toward engaging online.
Just in time for Christmas, we began a whole slew of activities, such as another online Christmas Wish Tree campaign, wherein supporters could fulfill the wishes of young Children’s home residents. We crafted together an online Advent calender featuring 24 “doors” that opened, thereby providing 24 different opportunities to do some seasonal good.
Companies also use Christmas as a time to spread the cheer. Take SoftMaker for example, whose Load and Help 2009 campaign allowed users to download their SoftMaker Office 2008 package free of charge. The company donated 10 cents per download toward projects on betterplace.org, gathering altogether 6,089 Euros!
Just before the end of the year, we were able to launch the Payback Payback Donation World, enabling Payback credit card holders to donate their collected rewards points toward online projects at betterplace. Donors can see exactly what their generosity impacts. Naturally, 100% of the points are passed directly to intended projects.
Last but not least, a super story for the end of the year. A flower shop in danger of closing in Charlottenburg was saved by an initiative over betterplace.org. The initiative caused such a stir that it was even reported on by various offline media. Brilliant campaigning! It’s what we always say: stop crying, get cracking!
As you can see, a lot has happened. But we’re still far from done. Quite the opposite, rather. We are eager for the new year and look forward to more exciting stories, gripping campaigns and interesting experiences. Our transformation into a corporation will take place soon and then it’s full steam ahead! We’re still brimming with ideas…